Turkey: a Kurdish-language play performed for the first time in a municipal theater
A view of Istanbul whose municipal theater will host a Kurdish-language play on October 13, 2020. AP Photo / Emrah Gurel
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
This Tuesday, October 13, in Turkey, the Istanbul Municipal Theater is hosting a grand premiere.
A play in the Kurdish language will be played on its stage.
The Teatra Jiyana Nû (Theater of New Life) troupe presents a play by Italian writer Dario Fo.
Known in French under the title Klaxon, trompettes ... et pétarades, the piece is simply called Bêrû, "Without a face" in Kurdish.
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With our correspondent in Istanbul,
Anne Andlauer
Over the
past two years, Teatra Jiyana Nû, a precursor of Kurdish theater in Turkey, has performed her play
Bêrû
a good hundred times.
But until now, she had never performed for a municipal theater.
No Kurdish troop, moreover, had ever been programmed by a Turkish town hall.
Too controversial, in a country where the Kurdish language - that of millions of people, however - is still not welcome in the public sphere.
Actress Rugeş Kirici is both enthusiastic and cautious.
“
The important thing is to know if it will happen again or not.
We do not yet know if it is only a symbolic gesture, we do not know if the stages of the municipal theaters will be open to Kurdish troops in the future… We all, without exception, encounter immense difficulties,
”he explains. -she.
It is therefore the city of Istanbul, led since last year by
an opposition mayor,
which requested this troop and other private troops, officially to help them in this period of pandemic.
But by having a play played in Kurdish, she also made a political gesture, which did not please everyone.
Rugeş and his colleagues were the victims of a violent smear campaign in the press close to the government, which went so far as to accuse the town hall of bringing on stage members of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
“
We have been deliberately targeted and criminalized,”
deplores Rugeş Kirici.
These reactions testify to a total intolerance towards the Kurdish language, but it is also a method to attack the city hall of Istanbul.
"
For now, the latter has only planned one performance of the play
Bêrû
.
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